


Look Before You Leap

by lemonfizzies



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Heavy Angst, Not Canon Compliant - Sock Opera, Soos and Stan are mentioned briefly but not the main focus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-09-23 17:26:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9668525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemonfizzies/pseuds/lemonfizzies
Summary: IT'S ALL FUN AND GAMES UNTIL SOMEBODY F̸́̉̽̂̓͏̲̠̙̭̖͇A̙̟͖̳͐ͨ͐̾̓̕͞Ļ̶̠̥̗̑̾̎̌̅L̷͔̰̠̣͔͗͋ͩ͑̔̓͗̚S̠ͫ̍ͣ͘





	

"I mean, who would sacrifice everything they've worked for just for their dumb sibling?" Bipper snatches the journal before Mabel can reply, letting go of the rope.

 

The Shooting Star screams as she hurtles towards Earth.

 

Dipper drops his possession of the puppets, helpless as his twin crashes to the floor full-stop. Shell-shocked, he can't even gather his voice in the Mindscape, speechless and frozen. Yet, still, he hears it, coming from the catwalk above.

 

"MABEL OHMYGODOHMYGOD SOMEONE HELP!!"

 

Grunkle Stan is up and tearing down the aisle as Mabel crawls out of the faux cake, dizzy and bruised but none the worse for wear. Dipper sees himself (Bipper?) rush out of the wings, hair falling into the eyes and a grin barely contained. The audience whispers, shifts. Bipper is the first to reach her, grabbing Mabel by the arm, with eyes shut tight against some unseen horror.

 

"Mabel Mabel oh God it's -"

 

Mabel jerks back, unsure of anything, and the young boy who may or may not be her brother suddenly collapses, screaming.

 

"Agh, Mabel, do something!"

 

The brief flash of coherence is replaced by an inhuman wail, a primal thing that shakes everyone to their bones. Stan freezes in memory, suddenly faced with the blinding maw of the portal and Stanford fast disappearing while he stands, as usual, helpless. Soos, realizing Stan is crying silently at the ceiling, attempts to shake the old man out of his flashback, and is met with a brass-knuckled blow to the face. Stan regains his senses, too late. Soos is down for the count and the audience is long past whispering. Accusatory glares are shot in his direction but most eyes, terrified and lonely, are directed at the stage. Stan's follow and he wishes he hadn't.

His eyes are burning with the weight of the scene onstage, no longer following Mabel's script but a performance all the same. He sees is his nephew, so carefully changed and grown over a single summer, his nephew is screaming, begging for help on his knees.

Mabel cannot tear her eyes away, even as they blur with tears. Her brother, or not her brother, writhes in agony enough for her to snatch the Journal when he went down kicking. He's clawing at the stage, bleeding from all ten fingers, trying to scratch out a symbol in the wood despite the periodic bucking of his back followed by the production of a new and animalistic howl.

Dipper digs his hands into his own body from the outside, groping for the familiar hum and buzz that means he's made contact with Bill's demonic consciousness. He grabs fast and tight, the raw energy of Bill's true, unseen form shooting through his arms and screaming in his head so that he almost lets go on instinct. He doesn't and, instead, yanks as hard as he can. Strength, in this circumstance, is measured by the willpower of one's disembodied mind, and Dipper is not just pulling for himself, but for Mabel's sake as well. He would NOT let Bill touch her ever again.

Bill cannot see anything, eyes thrown wide but down, unseen, blinded by dark spots and twinkling stars, unprepared for the wonderful, wonderful pain that shoots through his very core. Pine Tree's ripping him out of this vessel, but not without a fight, oh, no, Bill always loved a romp in the metaphorical hay, hey, hey! The body went limp for a moment, Bill felt himself lifted partially out, and he scrabbles for any purchase against the polished planks. Only the sock, the shoe, the flesh of the Shooting Star, and he swipes but catches nothing except empty air. He flails blindly, ruining the body as much as possible, and again cries out in the hope that the idiot human will mistake him for her brother in distress.

Mabel clutches the Journal to her chest, just barely dodging the outstretched hand of the creature on the floor. Her heart pounds in her ears, she thinks, oh, I just need his eyes! His eyes, how can I know?

"Dipper, please!" She chokes out through the sobs building in her chest, heaving her ribcage with the effort of restraint. Dipper swipes wildly at his shoulders, batting and swinging at the empty space above him as he is, again, lifted and slammed back to the unforgiving stage. His mutilated hands pulse a steady stream of blood, thick and viscous, and suddenly he is smearing the liquid over the previously attempts at etching. Mabel's breath hitches in her throat at the completion of a small but clear isosceles triangle.

Her eyes widen, and she sees the battle with new eyes. He tried to warn her, he was trying to tell her all along! She can practically see Bill clawing at her brother, attempting to rip him out of his own body again. Mabel has no idea how Dipper managed to regain possession of it, but he's losing - fast. He's tearing at the outfit, the costume, and if his nails weren't eviscerated then he would have carved himself a new Starry Night in his own chest.

Bill is so overcome by the heat of the moment, the pain just too much to bear, he's going to break character, he's going to scream for an entirely different reason, already reduced to mere gasping and drawn-out moans of pleasure. He can't keep this up much longer, he's going to have to give in, and, really, would it be so bad? All this, this stimulating, overwhelming pain, wasn't it just beyond expectations? Explanation? He pants, sharp and quick, just something, maybe, to release the pressure in his head, in his everywhere. It doesn't help.

Mabel is flipping frantically through the Journal, ripping pages as she goes along, and hears that perhaps he cannot even scream, so much pain, beyond vocalization, just groans and rolls and bucks. He's fading.

 She improvises, she panics, she finds a phrase in a language she doesn't understand underneath a brilliantly red "IN CASE OF EMERGENCY." It flakes under her index finger as she guides her eyes to keep from skipping around, ahead, from fumbling the ritual. She ignores how much it feels like dried blood.

Bill screams, punctuated by short, spastic peals of laughter and goes limp for a full second and a half, frightening Mabel so that she nearly loses her page trying to catch the tome she dropped. She reads at a lightning pace, racing to finish before something more happens.

The incantation reaches Bill's ears and his pupils contract in recognition, he knows this, ancient, ancient language, and this gives him the determination to finally slam Pine Tree back a good twenty feet, dazed and shocked. Mabel takes this as Bill being pushed away, still not seeing the body's eyes, and continues, louder, nose in the book and unafraid.

Dipper wavers and struggles to maintain his shape and form, what happens if u lose consciousness in a world where your consciousness is your only existence? He wasn't keen to find out.

Bill, tingling and teetering in the aftermath of release, turns to face the Shooting Star as she utters the final word of the exorcism rite, gaze darting up to find a pair of glowing yellow eyes staring right back. Mabel shrieks, dropping the book as NOT HER BROTHER falls over backwards, twitching and convulsing with uncontrollable spasms of mirth.

Dipper regains his solidity and rushes towards his body just as Bill comes blasting out, crashing into Dipper and absolutely roaring with laughter, melting and dripping at the corners, nearly crying in ecstasy. Dipper shoves him off, deeply perturbed by the fact that this demon was enjoying himself when he had, by all accounts, just lost the battle. Well, Dipper wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth and takes the opportunity to shoot towards his home, an unending stream of gratitude and explanation and apology already forming on his lips. He dives headfirst into his body --

Pain. Unimaginable pain, beyond anything he'd been subjected to in his brief lifetime. His consciousness verges on wavering out yet again as he reels, spinning back to crash into Bill, who is still laughing.

Mabel feels her stomach drop to her knees, expecting Dipper to have at least moved by now. His body is still as a corpse.

"Just get up, please get up" she repeats incessantly, silently, tugging at her sweater in the throes of near panic. She tries to hope against the inevitable.

Dipper disentangles himself from Bill yet again, repulsed and confused.

"Nice going, Brainiac!"

Bill is beside himself, pantomiming the act of wiping a tear from one eye.

Dipper is confused, frightened, thinking Bill is mocking him for being ejected. He grows increasingly hysterical as he is slammed back and back and back every time he attempts to re-enter his body, an aura of white-hot energy growing thicker and thicker every time he fails, until Dipper is separated from himself by a cocoon of burning bright smoke.

"Man, talk about ANCIENT! Haven't heard that one in a millennium!" A pause, a beat, "Damn, that's some strong SHIT."

Dipper focuses all his rage and terror onto the glowing demon before him, attacking Bill before he can continue.

Mabel shakes Dipper, his head lolling, eyes open and glassy, and Stan finally makes it through the crowd of panicking onlookers to reach his family. His heart skips a beat at what he finds.

"WHAT DID YOU TO TO ME, CIPHER?!" Dipper half-pleads, half-demands an answer, sending Bill into another round of hysterics.

"Not me, Pine Tree!" He manages to articulate, "Her!"

Dipper follows the black-gloved finger to see Mabel cradling one end of the cocoon as Stan pumps the center, pausing every few moments to dip his head against the end that Mabel is holding. It takes a few rounds before Dipper recognizes the motions of CPR. If he had a stomach, it would have dropped, if he had a neck, it would have pricked, but he has neither because Dipper, like Bill, is only an energic manifestation of consciousness.

"Man, don't you just love those gotta-catch-'em-all type rituals? They just don't make 'em like they used to!" Bill is certainly mocking Dipper now, staring him down, watching the spectacle of the young boy losing all hope of life. The twinkle in his eye could spark a house fire.

"Those old-timer incantations don't care WHAT'S tryin' to get in! Complete lockdown!"

Dipper finally loses it, wavering and flickering as he lets out a bloodcurdling scream, burning his hands as they tear at the Godforsaken white bubble keeping his body from himself. Bill laughs and laughs and laughs and Mabel cries and cries and cries and Stan pumps, pumps, pumps his nephew's chest.

\-------

In Loving Memory

Mason Pines

Declared Dead At The Scene

\-------

Bill left. Dipper didn't care. He remained hovering over Mabel's shoulder, wanting to say something, anything, but caught forever in the silence of the Mindscape.

He wanted to tell her he was there. To hold her, and say he wasn't gone.

That it wasn't her fault.

That was precisely why he was late to his own funeral, Mabel a blubbering mess on his bed, holding his shirt to her chest and crying, crying, crying, she was so sorry, she was so, so sorry.

However, as Bill so aptly pointed out: it absolutely was.

Dipper tried not to think about that. So he hovered, silently, behind her and he didn't look in the casket.

**Author's Note:**

> WHO DOESNT LOVE A HEALTHY DOSE OF DEATH AND ANGST TO TURN A WILD SATURDAY NIGHT INTO A TRUE FIESTA OF PAIN AMIRIGHT ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ


End file.
